blandry (5/11/2009)
I have whined, ranted and raved for years about the lack of a good definition of what a DBA is. In fact, I would like to challenge you (Steve et al) to define what a DBA is! Over the years I have interviewed surely well over 100 people for DBA positions and its nothing less than amazing to find what people "out there" think makes a DBA. Some of the responses I have gotten when asking people why they are applying for a DBA position range from "I know how to write stored procedures!" to "I have done some SQL backups." to "That was the title they gave me at my last job."We require that our DBAs know .NET as well which has meant over these last couple years that finding good qualified people is like finding a piece of hay in a pile of needles. I am happy to say though that we hooked up with a headhunter a couple years ago who has weeded out good candidates for us twice now, and thankfully I've gotten very good people - but in general, finding a good talented, qualified, team-player DBA has been like finding a good politician - there are thousands of them out there, and rarely one worth what their resumes would have you believe.
I wouldn't get too hung up on definitions, but to my mind a DBA (junior) at least spends most of their time on administration tasks like account management, backups, restores, index tuning, etc. I think you should modify the definition by what your organization needs. If 80% of the tasks fall within a few categories then that is what I would emphasize. I would also make the distinction between a production support DBA and a Development DBA. I would require some reasonable soft skills if they are going to be working a lot with developers.
Your .NET requirement for you DBA's raised my eyebrows. I'm a Sr.DBA working in a fairly large city in the midwest (US). I've been working in .NET since v1 since most of my DBA career has been in development work. However, most of the other DBA's I know do not have that kind of experience. That's just my experience though...:-)